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20 May 2012

Fire & Water

I know, I know. Occasionally it's good to share something other than photos of adorable babies -- even if she does supply seemingly endless fodder for her photographer-mother.

After church and a nap yesterday, we all walked to a park that is happily situated about half a mile from our house. The sun was out, there was not a cloud in the sky, and it wasn't too humid to be out.

Since there was SO MUCH natural light available (obviously), I put the ISO at the lowest setting, bumped up the shutter speed (as in waaaaaaaaay up), and set the lens at a smaller aperture than the maximum permitted by the lens. I experimented with different shutter speeds (I tried 1/2500 and 1/4000) and apertures (going as wide as f/2.0) to see what worked best, and this was the winning combo.

When I was taking the picture, I wanted the water to have a kind of softer look (meaning I couldn't have too tight an aperture), but I still wanted to capture the brilliance of the sunlight reflecting off the water, capturing the way it sparkled and seemed to create a starburst effect on the water (meaning I couldn't have too fast or too slow a shutter speed).

Take a look at the detail on the water in this zoomed in (100% resolution) version.

It took some trial and error with my settings, but I got exactly what I wanted. Look at those reflected starbursts of sunlight. Gah!! I love it!!

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Lessons Learned or Affirmed:

Try the same shot with a variety of settings to get the effect you want. You just might be surprised!